


Sam Winchester and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Humor, Toddlers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 05:33:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/845885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam will fight vampires, demons, and every hideous monster imaginable without batting an eye. He’s looked Hell in the face—heck, that’s every day for him. But a roomful of screaming toddlers proves too much for his jaded hunter’s heart to take.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sam Winchester and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Sam was sweating. His hands were shaking. He swallowed bile and tried to take a deep breath, but his lungs refused to fill, and his chest ached with the tension.

Of course, he’d been in some dicey situations in his time as a hunter. He’d been to Hell. He’d died, more than once. He’d faced monsters too hideous to look upon, and had half become a monster himself… he’d spent hours of his life hiding in the shadows, knowing that something that wanted to rip out his soul was lurking, waiting for him…

But he had never in his darkest dreams imagined facing a situation like this one.

His lavender-clad nemesis gazed up at him, all sinisterly chubby cheeks, wispy ringlets, and wide, supposedly innocent eyes. “Sam?” she piped. “Will you button me?”

_Button_ her? Sam shook himself. The toddler’s jacket was unbuttoned and askew. Her little hands pulled ineffectually at it, trying to make it meet in the front. “Oh, uh… OK…” Approaching slowly so as not to startle the creature, he then grabbed the cloth and fastened the jacket as quickly as possible. His hands felt too large for the small buttons, and in his haste to move away, he knocked her down. She tumbled backward on her short legs and landed on her diaper-padded bottom.

The banshee wail that filled the classroom was like nails of ice scratching at his soul.

_Oh no…_ he thought, as the hordes around them turned toward the sound, like wolves pricking their ears at the howl that signaled the prey had been brought down. There was a silence as the banshee sucked in breath, then…

The howls began to spread. First one, then five, then every toddler in the room began to cry.

“Sam! What did you do to her?”

Sam felt relief sweeter than wine spread through his veins at the sound of Dean’s voice. His brother had saved his life more times than he could count, but he had never been so glad to see him.

Dean swept in and picked up the girl Sam had knocked down. “What’s the matter, sweetheart?” he cooed, cuddling her. “Did my big, dumb moose of a brother knock you down?”

The girl stopped crying with a long, dramatic sniffle. She nodded and clung to Dean, pressing her face into his shoulder. Sam imagined the bacteria that must be germinating on her little, chubby, dirty hands that had just wiped snot from her face, and were now circling Dean’s neck. A boy standing nearby stopped crying and laughed. “Dumb moose!” he shouted.

The laughter spread as quickly as the howling had, and Sam’s blood ran cold as twenty toddlers pointed at him, laughing, half of them chanting “Dumb moose!” and giggling hysterically, the other half taking advantage of the distraction and finding, in seconds flat, ways to cause destruction in what Sam had believed to be a completely child-proofed room.

“You’re too big!” shouted Sam’s nemesis, glaring at Sam over Dean’s shoulder.

“Dean,” Sam whispered, moving close as Dean set the now-cheerful child down and told her to go play. “What the hell are we doing here? I can’t deal with this!”

“I told you, Sam. I think the manager of this preschool is a witch. Garth managed to get us in as substitute teachers for the day. We have to sweep the place, look for hex bags.”

“Is that why they’re so… evil?” Sam asked, watching a boy meticulously spread the insides of his peanut butter crackers into the cardboard pages of a picture book. “They’re under a spell?”

Dean arched his eyebrow at Sam. “You’ve really never spent any time around kids, have you?”

“Well, when did _you_ become such an expert?”

“Garth was here this morning. He took your shift while you were doing research. He’s a natural with kids; he taught me a few things. It’s easy; I just play with ‘em. They love me. Just relax and have fun, Sammy!”

Sam gazed around at the chaos surrounding him. The peanut-butter-spreading boy was now crushing the sticky remains of his crackers into a girl’s hair. The girl began shrieking bloody murder. Another girl had gotten hold of the pull that opened the blinds and was yanking on it, raising and lowering the blind. She then attempted to swing on the blinds like Tarzan. How was he supposed to _relax?_

“You handle the kids for a minute,” Sam said desperately. “I’ll look for hex bags.”

“Got it,” said Dean, as a 4-year-old boy grabbed his leg and shouted, “AC/DC rules!”

“You remembered! Rock on!” said Dean, ruffling the kid’s hair.

Sam searched the room frantically. If there was a hex bag, he was damn well going to find it and get the hell out of here. He’d much rather fight the witch and her curses than deal with these tiny monsters. He felt like… well, like a moose, being attacked by a hundred miniature Dachshunds. No single one of them could harm him, but en masse… they would surely bring him down if he couldn’t escape.

Dodging toddlers, he began to search the little cubbies where sparkly purple backpacks and various car-shaped bags and Disney-character-decorated lunch boxes were stowed. He was just getting absorbed in his task when a voice spoke at his elbow.

“What are you doing?”

Sam jumped. It was his nemesis! She’d followed him! She stared directly at him with a penetrating, unwavering gaze that reminded him of someone…

She spoke words that rained terror upon Sam’s very soul.

“I have to go potty.”

“Don’t you wear a diaper?”

“NO! I HAVE BIG GIRL PULL-UPS!”

“I believe the girl is in the latter stages of learning continence,” said a familiar voice.

Both Sam and his nemesis looked up. Cas was looming over them in his trench coat. Sam realized who he’d been reminded of a moment before. His nemesis immediately went to Cas, staring up at him.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“How do _you_ know about… continence?” asked Sam in the same moment.

“My name is Castiel,” said Cas in a flat voice. He turned to Sam, moving his whole body stiffly instead of just turning his head. “I have seen television advertisements regarding small children and the accomplishment of this goal. She is wearing the advertised undergarments. Apparently she can pull them off and on.”

“Will _you_ take me to the potty?”

“No. Sam, we must complete this mission quickly. I—”

“Shhh!” Sam hushed Cas sharply and went for the quick distraction. “OK, I’ll take you to the potty—”

“NO! I want him!” The girl grabbed the bottom of Cas’s trench coat and tugged on it. “Are you a teacher?”

“No. Sam—”

“What are you then?”

“I am an angel of the lord.”

Sam winced. He fought the urge to simply flee, but then he realized this could be very interesting. He stood back, in the shadow of the cubbies where the other toddlers wouldn’t see him, and watched the angel in the little girl’s clutches.

She made no particular response to Cas’s declaration that he was an angel. She looked a little doubtful, sticking her fingers in her mouth. Then, “Where are your wings?”

“They are not visible on this plane.”

The girl frowned at him. “We’re not on a plane! We’re at my school!”

“My wings are not visible at your school, either. Excuse me.” He attempted to dodge around her, but she stepped in front of him, and he had to stop abruptly.

“Aren’t angels supposed to take care of little girls?” she wheedled, pouting and hanging on his coat. “My mom says my guardian angel will always take care of me.”

“I am not your guardian angel.”

“Can you take me to meet my guardian angel? Does he look like you? Could I see _his_ wings since he’s my guardian angel?”

Cas stared down at the girl for a long moment. Then, ignoring her questions, he turned back toward Sam’s hiding place. “Sam…”

“PICK ME UP!” shouted the girl. Her tones were so piercing that everyone on the room turned toward them, and Cas stooped and picked her up automatically, as if compelled to obey.

“Can I _touch_ your wings?” She sat happily on Cas’s arm and continued her interrogation as if there had been no interruption.

“No. You would be vaporized. Sam, I do not know why you’re attempting to hide—”

“He’s too _big_ to hide. He’s a big, dumb moose,” the girl opined.

Cas looked down at the girl. “Agreed,” he said.

“Hey!” said Sam.

“I need to go potty,” repeated the girl.

“Cas, can you just take Madison to go potty? The bathroom is right back there.”

The girl made a growling sound. “I’m TAYLOR,” she said angrily.

Sam shifted uncomfortably. “Right… Taylor,” he said. They were all named Taylor or Madison, and with Taylor, it could be either a boy or a girl. It was all very confusing.

Cas stared at Sam flatly, then looked back down at the girl. “Do you really require assistance? I believe it is a simple process. I do not have to perform it myself, and am relatively uninformed about it.”

The girl stared for a moment, sucking her fingers. Then she giggled. “You don’t ever have to go potty?”

“No.”

“Not pee-pee _or_ poo-poo?”

“I am not familiar with these terms. But no.”

“Cas, just help her get undressed and sit her on the toilet.” He gave Cas a significant look. “Then I’ll see if I can find what we came for.”

Cas considered for a moment. “Very well,” he said, and departed with the girl.

Sam breathed a sigh of relief and scrambled back to the cubbies, searching frantically. Toddlers had all kinds of weird, inexplicable stuff in their possession. It would be all too easy to hide a hex bag among it. If these were normal toddlers, as Dean seemed to think, there was no telling what horrors awaited if they were affected by a spell.

“What are you doing?” a voice asked, for the second time in a few minutes.

Sam huffed in impatience and looked up. It was a new boy, one Sam hadn’t interacted with yet, but he recalled that the kid’s fingers were constantly up his nose. Where the hell was Dean?

“Go on, kid,” said Sam, waving toward the door, which was open to the playground. From the ecstatic screams drifting into the room, Dean was out there playing with the kids. “Go play. It’s recess time.”

“Those aren’t your things. You’re not supposed to touch other people’s things.”

Sam looked at him levelly. For whatever reason, the little boy didn’t scare him quite as much as the little girl had. He contemplated Cas’s response of honesty, how that had seemed, in a way, to work better than making something up. Not that Cas would ever not be honest, anyway. But Sam really didn’t have the energy to make up a lie. He figured that, if the kid ratted him out and they got kicked out, it would be no great loss. He wanted to get the hell out of there the minute he could, anyway.

“That’s true, usually,” Sam agreed. “But right now I’m looking for something that doesn’t belong to anyone here, something that shouldn’t be here that I need to take away.”

“What is it? Is it a bomb?” The kid was remarkably calm about the idea. His interest seemed piqued, if anything.

“Umm, no. Not a bomb, but something that’s… bad in the same kind of way.”

“Are you a bomb-finder? Are you not really our teacher?”

Sam looked at the kid. He decided it was best not to take away his position of authority. “I’m your teacher today,” he said darkly.

“Will you be our teacher tomorrow?”

“Jesus, I hope not.”

The kid stood staring for a moment while Sam pulled out the contents of another cubby. Then he toddled over next to him and grabbed the stuff out of the next cubby and dumped it on the floor.

“I’ll help you find it!” he said cheerfully. He gleefully started tossing things out of the dinosaur-shaped backpack he’d pulled out.

Sam stared in horror for a moment. Then he shrugged. The hex bag wouldn’t hurt the kid just from touching it. Maybe he actually _could_ help.

“OK, but look carefully,” he instructed. “You’re looking for a little leather bag, tied closed, about this big.” Sam held his fingers in a sphere to illustrate. “But it could look like anything, so show me anything that looks suspicious.”

Unfortunately, the kid seemed to think a lot of stuff that he found was suspicious, or at least fun to play with. It was like all his suppressed desire to play with other kids’ toys was being happily fulfilled. “Is this suspicious, Sam? I don’t really think you look like a moose. Will the bomb hurt me? Is your brother older than you? Do you guys tease each other? Are you both grown up now? Is _this_ the bomb?”

He kept up his monologue while Sam searched frantically, then suddenly there was a silence. Sam basked in it for a moment, then with a thrill of adrenaline, remembered what had happened last time there was silence among the kids, earlier that morning. He shuddered at the memory, and looked over anxiously. “Hey, kid…”

“I think this is it,” said the boy quietly. “It smells weird.”

Sam gasped. The kid was holding the hex bag. There was no mistaking it.

Sam moved slowly, and carefully took the bag from the kid’s unresisting fingers. He tucked it carefully in his pocket. The boy looked scared.

“Good job, uhh… what’s your name?”

“Kyle.”

“Kyle. You found it. This is really important, OK? My brother and I needed this. If we didn’t find it, something bad would’ve happened. So you helped us.”

Kyle looked scared. “Are you and your brother bomb-finders?” he asked again.

“Something like that. Listen, it’s gonna be OK now. You can go outside and play with the other kids.”

“I wanna stay with you.” He scooted close to Sam and, unexpectedly, hugged him tight.

Sam froze. But instead of being freaked out, as he had been when the other kids tried to touch him (and they were _always_ trying to touch him), he was rather touched.

He picked Kyle up and headed outside. He’d dreaded this part—picking a kid up—and had managed, with great difficulty, to avoid it all morning. But it felt oddly natural.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m not staying here, so you can’t stay with me. But thanks for your help.” He set Kyle down on the playground. He looked around for Dean, and saw him, shouting triumphantly as he slid down a zigzag tube slide that he could barely fit in. A horde of screaming kids followed him down.

Kyle contemplated Dean with a frown. “He doesn’t act like a bomb-finder,” he pronounced.

Sam laughed. “No, not so much.”

“Did you find it?”

Sam turned. Cas stood in the doorway, holding Taylor.

“Yep. Well, Kyle did.”

“And Taylor knows where to find the witch. It’s their substitute teacher.”

“Miss Spinner,” said Taylor solemnly. “She lives down the street from me. She does mean things to frogs.”

Dean came jogging up at that moment. “Found a hex bag,” he announced, producing it and showing it to them. “It was taped inside the slide.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you searched thoroughly,” said Sam dryly.

“Hey, it was your job to find the things. I was on kid-wrangling duty.”

The kids were screaming for Dean from the playground. Cries of “Dean! Push me!” and “You can’t find me, Dean!” filled the air. Dean looked back at them and sighed.

“What are we gonna do? We need to go take care of that witch, but we can’t leave the kids by themselves. Garth won’t be here for another hour.”

“Sam. Dean.” Cas spoke very seriously. “We cannot waste more time here. There are more important things to attend to than petty spell-weavers. You need to conclude this case immediately.”

“OK, then, genius, what are we supposed to do? Split up? That _always_ works out really well for us,” said Dean sarcastically. “Or should we just abandon twenty toddlers and hope for the best?”

“I will care for the children,” said Cas. “Taylor has informed me that this is part of an angel’s duties.”

Both brothers stared at him blankly. “Our conversation was most edifying,” said Cas. Taylor, still sitting on Cas’s arm, giggled and hugged Cas’s neck. “Go on. Get rid of the witch. No harm will come to the children. I swear it.”

“He’s an _angel?”_ said Kyle, who still stood close to Sam. His expression was frankly disbelieving. “Like in the Bible?”

“Exactly as in the Bible,” said Cas.

“We’re gonna have an _angel_ for our teacher?”

“Just until Garth gets here,” said Sam. “Umm… Kyle. Taylor. Listen. About us, and… what you helped us do this afternoon…”

“We won’t tell,” chirped Taylor brightly. “Castiel already said why it was important.”

Kyle didn’t look so sure, but Cas said he would “edify” him. Sam and Dean hastily departed to take care of business.

Finding the witch was easy. Sam had thought he’d feel bad, killing a female pre-school teacher, but it turned out to be a lot less terrifying than facing a roomful of twenty screaming toddlers had been. She was fairly monstrous. They learned that she been a part-time teacher just to get access to the kids, for ingredients she needed for spells, like baby’s hair. But fortunately she hadn’t done anything bad to them. She had harmed plenty of adults with those spells, though, and she definitely needed to go.

In their hotel room, later that night, Sam reflected that, in a lifetime of hunting, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever had a scarier day. Weirder was the fact that, when he was honest with himself, he was pretty sure he would remember it fondly.

 

~The End~

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for this prompt from LJ user blackrabbit42 at spn_bigpretzel, from the spring fic exchange: “Undercover assignment as pre-school teachers, or teachers aids. Cas too please!”


End file.
